" MAN OR DEMON."

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2644, 22 June 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

" MAN OR DEMON."

It is nearly forty years since all Paris was flocking to see Frederic Lemaitre in a certain grisly melodrama bearing the above title. The story of the play was simple; the plot turned out one ghastly pivot—demoniac possession. A physician, a man of science and enlightenment, refined, intellectual, of blameless life and gracious bearing, beloved and respected by the world he adorned, was possessed by devils. In tho broad light of day, in the exercise of his profession, in society, ho was his own man, all went well with him ; but with night and solitude the demon came and took possession of his victim, aad impelled him to deeds of blood.

Through the darkened theatre there thrilled a silent horror that held the crowded audieuuo spell-bound, as the man of scieuso /lung a handful of powder into his crueitw, and, in the lurid light that rose around him was seen the awful chat)go from man to monster. The tall, slim figure of the physician, graceful and elegant in his neat evening dress, swelled to gigantic dimensions, brawny, muscular, t,ho form of a savago Hercules, while tho fashionable modern dross changed to tho blue blouse aud blood-rod cap of the saucnlotto. The face changed, too; the pate, refund features thickened, tho brows grew penthouse-tike above tho lurid gleam of tho malignant eyes ; while, with a cry that had nothiug in it of

humanity, the transformed creature lushed forth to reveal iu rapine and murder.

One fact gave an additional and extraneous interest to the performance. Those who knew tho celebrities of the city were able to recognise tho curious and startling likoness which Lemaitro, in his make-up as the physician, had contrived to present to ono of tho princes of modern science, Marc Avalon, the celebrated chemist—a man who, at less than forty years of ago, had reached tho very pinuaele of professional success, who had given laws to science, and had made discoveries which had advanced the progress of chemical experiment further in his twenty years of labour than his predecessors had done within a century. So striking' was the resemblance as to be at once perceived and remarked upon, both at the first performance of the play and in the public press. It was even thought that Marc Avalon would take offence at this appropriation of his outward semblance, and possibly make it the subject of a lawsuit; but the great chemist seemed amused, and even flattered, when he read the comments of the critics upon this particular feature of Lemaitre's characterisation. Ho went to see the play—was interested : went again —saw Lemaitre in his dressing-room, and made several suggestions which intensified the grim realism of the soeno in the laboratory.

It was observed by and by that Avalon was present nearly every night during some period of the performance. Ho generally occupied one particular avantsoene, aud kept himself perdu, but those few persons who were able to see his face, as he sat in the shadow of tho curtain, remarked upon its intent expression and the keen delight he seemed to derive from tho actor's masterly embodiment of an unreal character.

It was during- tho run of this play that Paris was startled by a series of murders more hideous than any crime that had shocked society during the reign of the Citizen-King ; murders which bore a horrible resemblance in bringing to all appearances motiveless, and tho work of a monster, whose sole desire was to steep himself iu the blood of an unoffending victim.

Paris and tho police of Paris wore on tho alert, looking for the Ghourineur. It was by that grim name the murderer was talked of in those circles whuro slang is the only language. Cauler, the chief of the secret gu irdians of the public safety, had worked till he was weary ; weary of his own false lights and failures : wearier of other people's' futile and .sometimes idiotic suggestions. He was sitting in April twilight before a cafe on tho Boulevard des Italians, not many doors from tho Ambigu Theatre, sitting alone at one of the little marble tables, taking his demitasse after a temperate dinner, aud listening idly to the conversations round and about him. He was off duty, restiug a jaded brain, yet the old habit of listening and putting two aud two together at all times aud in all places was so strong upon him that his ear was on the alert unconsciously, and his brain soon awakened to interest in tho talk of two men at the table near his own.

They were of the flaneur species both, one young, one man who knew their Paris, evidently. "Here he comes," said the elder man, lookiny down the boulevard toward the Grand Opera. "I felt sure iio would pass us before 3 o'clock ; he is there every night."

"Not every night, surely?'' said the other. " I have seen the piece at least half a ilozeii times, and he was in the theatre every time. Men have told me the same tiling. It is a kind of mania— a diseased vanity—l suppose. Ho likes to see himself on the stage—the central figure, the cynosure of every eye."

The man they spoke of approached and passed toward the theatre. Tall, slim, well-dressed, with a light overcoat over his evening suit, pale, with a fixed look about the eyes, a curious mobility about the mouth.

"He looks harassed and ill," said the youncr man. "Overwork, brain pressure," said the elder. "I should not be surprised if I were to hear within the next few mouths that Marc Avalon had gone off his head."

Caulor rose and followed ths great chemist into the theatre, followed him to the door of his avant-soenc, and then went round the other side of the house, and got a stall from which lie could observe the faee in the shadow of the curtain as well as the lowered lights would allow.

The idoa of this prince of science being on tho verge of lunacy had started a train of curious thought in tho brum of the skilled detective. Ho hung about the vestibule till he saw Marc Avalou leave the theatre, and was able to keep him in sight without appearing to follow him, An elderly man, who looked like a doctor, accosted tho savant as ho went out, and tho two men walked along. They went into tho cafe, came out in a quarter of an hour, when Avalon hailed a. cab.

The detective followed him in another. The fly deposited hitn at his own house in the Rue St. Guillaume. Ciuler drove to the end of the street, di.smis.--ed his cab and went back to Mare Avnlon'a doorway ou foot. The house in which the chemist lived was a lino old mansion in a quadrangular court, dull, dignified, respectable. It was a moonless night, and the courtyard was black as Erebus at this hour, save for one lamp which burned dimly over the porte-cochere. There was plenty of cover for the detective. He saw the light of a lamp go slowly through two rooms upon the second floor and finally settle in a third room.

The external Venetian shutters were closed, but there was no curtain within, aud tlio lamplight shone betwixt the wooden bars.

M. Cauler took up his position in the embrasure of a doorway leading to the offices, an obscure doorway in a corner of the great, gruvo house, as if he meant to stay there half the night, A curious waste of power, one might suppose, this night-watch in the Rue St. Guillaume, but of late Cauler had been wasting much power in hunting will-o'-the-wisps across the morass of Paris, and one ignus fatuus is as good as another. To night it was Cauler's whim to watch the windows of Marc Avalon.

The lamplight continued undisturbed for au hour and a half. The third quarter after one tolled heavily from the tower of Notro Dame yonder, and other church chimes repeated the solemn measure. Suddenly those windows on the second floor grow dark. This time the light did not travel from room to room ; it was extinguished on the spot.

" The raan of science lias j,'one to bed," said Cauler, with a touch of disappointment. "I may go homo aud get my supper." He waited some minutes notwithstanding, and, looking- up, presently he gave a cry of triumphant surprise. " Dieu de Dieu ! I have hit it this time," he muttered.

There was a light shining through the shutters of those three upper windows—a light n.oio vivid than the shine of the domestic lamp, a fiery crimson glow, such as lie had seen in the theatre three hours ago, in the famous laboratory scene. It lasted three or four minutes, and then came darkness again. This time Cauler had no idea of going home to supper. He waited for the cxpee'ed opening of door or u indow.

It came prcs.-.ntly : a window on the ground floor was cautiously lifted and a man ; topped out into the courtyard—a man wearing a blue blouse and a red cap,

a ruffianly-looking brute, with big, projecting teeth, like the fangs of a wild beast, and long-, coarse black hair, like the hair of a wild beast.

This brutal figure crept stealthily across the yard and out of the porte cochere, Cauler following more stealthily ; for the walk of the blouse there was the overacted caution of the novice, in the walk of the detective there was the subtlety of the mau accustomed to hunt his fellow men.

He followed that creeping figure, slouching across the road, doubling, winding, his hand clutching something in his breast. Canlcr followed him from the Rue St. Guillaume to the Quai des Grands Augustins, across one of the bridges to the Cit6, from the Cite by another bridge to the region of the markets ; never lost sight of him, yet on the way contrived to call in at a station of night police and to enlist a couple of policemen in the chase. The three contrived to keep Blue-blouse in sight, wind and double as he might; watched him as he accosted a night wanderer in a dark alley, and saw her fly from him, scared at that grim face and panther teeth under the red cap. They followed him through the intricacies of a labyrinth of squalid streets which has long disappeared, saw him stop to speak to a woman, more wretched than perhaps sue who had fled from him half an hour before—saw him bend to speak to her as if in frendliness, then with a sudden clutch fasten one livid hand upon her throat, while the other hand was thrust into her breast.

Quick as they wore to spring upon him, they were not an instant too soon Another second and that long knife would have done its deadly work, as it had done thrice before iu the streets of Paris. The Chourineur, the murderer of the Rue Sto. Marguerite, the Km: de la Lanterns, and the Rue des Feve.i, was found. Yes, this was the solution of the mystery. Homicidal mania, the fatal outcome of a brain wrecked by overwork, day labour and night labour—the too ardent thirst ■for knowledge, the too keen ambition to achieve It had needed but a spark to fire the brain, and the spark had been found in the suggestion of the drama at Ambigu. Marc Avalon had watched and brooded over the play till it had become a reality to him, and he had yielded to the irresistible impulse that drove hiin to act out the idea in his own person.

He died before the end of a year iu a state lunatic asylum. In searching his laboratory the police found more than one set of fangs, carved in ivory which the chemist had laboriously fashioned in imitation of the actor's hideous make up. It was discovered, too, that he had carried his experiments with the magnesium lights, then little known, far beyond the mechanism of the theatre ; but confessions made by him later to the doctors of the asylum revealed that he had firmly believed in his possession of occult knowledge by which he was able to assume diabolical attributes and diabolical power. — Ex.